THE 7 SAAS CONFERENCES YOU MUST ATTEND IN 2016

THE 7 SAAS CONFERENCES YOU MUST ATTEND IN 2016

New Years is all about parties, champagne, and resolutions. This year, instead of making resolutions you will never keep, like only eating two bars of dark chocolate a week or trying to make it to the gym once every other month, make plans to attend some SaaS-centric conferences in which you will learn, network, stay current with technology shifts in the marketplace, and probably party a little bit with other people in the industry.

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s a great time to take a step back and reflect on the state of your software company, then develop goals to hit the ground running in 2016. No matter what stage your organization falls within the business lifecycle, it’s important to celebrate your successes and gain wisdom from any missteps. Maybe this was the year you launched an SaaS start-up and received early rounds of funding. Maybe your SaaS team graduated a startup accelerator program and began flying solo. Perhaps 2015 was the year your SaaS team enjoyed exponential growth that exceeded all projections. A new year brings fresh opportunities to expand your business and reach towards the next milestone in your development.

The SaaS industry exploded in recent years, and the numbers continue to grow. The IDC Survey of SaaS and Cloud Services projected that “cloud software will exceed $100 billion in annual revenue by 2018, and SaaS delivery will significantly outpace traditional product delivery, growing 5x faster than the overall software market.” Don’t be fooled. Just because your software is stored on the cloud doesn’t mean that your relationships can be be formed there too.

Robert P. Mahowald, program vice president of IDC’s SaaS and Cloud Services research practice observed, “Figuring out how to find and capitalize on the enormous cloud services transformation is the #1 strategic goal of all major SaaS vendors. [This] represents both a tremendous challenge to meet change head-on and a huge opportunity to realign with partners, create new capabilities, move into new markets, and define new leaders.”

With that goal in mind, we’ve compiled a list of four must-attend events for SaaS companies to add to their calendars in 2016, that we will obviously be attending. Many of these annual events are hosted in multiple cities throughout the year, so your SaaS team can mix-and-match their selections to create the itinerary that works best for their schedule. Check out our list below, then get busy filling up your calendar for the New Year! (Tweet this)

Hosted by the world’s #1 CRM company, Dreamforce is among the largest software conferences on the planet. The 2015 conference welcomed more than 160,000 registered attendees from more than 78 countries to San Francisco, with an additional 10 million viewers online. Dreamforce unites the Salesforce community to discuss the future of enterprise technology—exploring how cloud, social, mobile, data science and IoT technologies are transforming the customer experience.

Sales Stack is the premier event for understanding how to build high performing sales machines, what technologies are essential, and which partners are right for your business. Attendees will connect with like minded salespeople, key decision makers, software buyers, and innovative new sales solutions spanning and servicing some of the largest sectors of the economy.

MicroConf is a two-day conference focused on self-funded startups and single founder software companies. Their speakers are hand-crafting their sessions for bootstrappers and won’t include talks about spending your huge piles of venture capital.

The Customer Success Summit is held in San Francisco’s historic Union Square, and offers direct access to top executives in a relaxed setting. Join interactive sessions to question and explore new ideas, hear from real practitioners sharing tangible best practices, and meet members from the global customer success community. (Self disclosure – We designed the website for Customer Success Summit.)

This SaaS-focused company produces three unique categories of events. The Cloud Channel Summit is the marketplace that allows leading Cloud vendors to enlist a broader set of channel partners to enhance their solutions to address the unique needs of specific geographic and vertical markets. The Connected Cloud Summit revolves around the opportunities and challenges with the IoT, then the Cloud Analytics summit teaches decision-makers how to interpret trends provided by ‘Big Data’.

The Marketing Code is Silicon Valley’s first conference devoted entirely to technology & B2B marketers. Marketing has changed drastically over the last five to ten years, and the name “The Marketing Code” came about because marketers must approach their marketing efforts in the same way that product teams do with roadmaps or engineering teams with building features — using a mix of creativity, data-driven analysis, testing, and key performance tracking.

Chime in! What are the most impactful conferences for your team to attend? At Hunter & Bard, we’re dedicated to providing outstanding inbound marketing and consulting services to the SaaS community. We’re passionate about sharing ideas that will set your team up for success. If there are any events or resources that we’ve missed, please add the links into the comment box below. We hope this list of events puts your team on the right track to expand your professional network, attend specialized training, and receive guidance from today’s most influential leaders.

Comment below and let us know what events you’re attending this year! Here’s to your success in 2016!

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